recklessly abandoned

During my few weeks of summer at home we drove hours up and down the roads through mountains and fields and forests and endless miles of construction zones, to visit friends and family and go to work and drop others off at the airport.  Chipper K-Love radio music followed us up and up until it finally faded to North Country Public Radio and French talk shows, then found the car as we headed south again back down to the airport a few days later. 

It was on one of these road trips that I first heard the song, playing softly under the chatter of catching up on life after a year away, in the background of discussions on plans and hopes and dreams.

“Recklessly abandoned, never holding back.” 

The lyrics wormed into my thoughts and refused to leave.  Reckless abandonment, with its negative connotations of gambling and bad parenting, could also be a desirable goal.  Wait...what?

I began to question what it would look like to live like that.  I had the sudden image of hang gliding off of a tall ocean cliff - there is no safety in faltering during the launch.  Reckless abandonment is the rush of the free-fall after a jump before the harness jerks you back to reality.   It’s the sure pursuit of a dream despite failure, the swift cut of a surgeon’s knife, and speeding up to lean into a sharp turn on a motorcycle.  It’s giving away water to the thirsty until I don’t have any left for myself.

It’s living my life as if it wasn’t mine, making the most of every moment without a thought for potential failure.  There is freedom in this.

We're halfway through another sail back to Africa, with the gentle rise and fall of endless blue outside my window and the sun swallowed up in haze every night.  Life moves more slowly - not because there is less to do, but because no matter what I do we aren't getting to land any sooner.  My world has temporarily shrunk to 499 feet and 8 decks of steel.

Like a New Year's resolution, it's a moment to stop and think what the last year has been, and what the next year will be.  It will be amazing and challenging and hard and wonderful, but the point is not what I will see or how it makes me feel.

What matters is how I respond.

I wanna live like that


And give it all I have


So that everything

I say and do


Points to You


If love is who I am


Then this is where I’ll stand


Recklessly abandoned


Never holding back


I wanna live like that    ~ Sidewalk Prophets

This idea has challenged me, gripping my heart until I’ve joyfully agreed.  This is where I stand.  My goals for Guinea start with reckless abandonment, until everything I say and do points to Christ…

I wanna live like that.

Drink deep

All of us are wounded, bruised and bleeding
Some put on an elaborate mask and pretend they are whole, carefully avoiding eye contact so they don't give away a secret that everyone already knows.
I don't display my injuries openly, neither are they hidden as if I am ashamed...they are a part of me.
I clean my lacerations and wrap them neatly in gauze and colorful cobaan,
Steristrips and benzoin to hold together wounds deeper than skin
And an old fracture, perhaps splinted too late,
Knowing if I cover my pain it won't disappear, no matter how many happy-face stickers I wear.

Sometimes loss seems almost too much to bear:
Young mothers suffering, slipped away before their time,
Bony brown babies struggling for breath in my arms
The unloved orphans living on the street, with stick-thin arms and worm-filled taut bellies and eyes unshuttered to wounded souls.
Abused, outcast, unwanted and homeless, does anyone remember their names?

They tell us in school to guard against your patients' pain
As if only the weak nurses recognize and share in loss.
But I leave myself unguarded with arms open to embrace.
I can't risk the callouses on my soul.

So I take my 5-gallon plastic jug with it's motorcycle-tire rope
Drop it deep into the community well to fill it full with sorrow
Drinking until it spills out the holes and the top and soaks my grimy shirt
Sharing with the mamas and papas and toothless grandmas
The baby with the broken face tied in a lappa and drooling down my back
And the children that clamor to hold my hand and call me Auntie.
Can I do any less?

Drinking until I am saturated, until all I know is that
Jesus is the pillar that holds my life.
Until all I know is that God is sovereign, and he will keep holding me when no one else can.

And I soak in the little things
Wrapped in strong arms and a blanket of sunshine and brilliant stars,
Rocking in gale-force winds that whisper comfort and strength
While dolphins play in the spray outside my porthole.
I breathe deep the scent of manure that lingers in the air and the back of my throat as I bike past silos and green fields
Wave to the bold raspberries peeking invitingly around the "No Trespassing" signs
Drain out the warm dishwater while wildflowers watch from their canning jar in the windowsill.

I steri-strip a cut finger and firmly wrap a bruised ankle and offer a reassuring smile as I think of my own wounds bandaged tight.
Offer a cool and gentle hand to smooth a hot forehead
or slip in IV after IV with a promise of fluids and morphine to come
And I grab scarred brown hands and spin around and around to the beat of the djembe,
A shouted and joyous prayer echoed in my heart
In celebration of hope and a new chance at life.
My cup overflows, again and again and again.

I can feel the wood grain beneath me and a warm breeze lifting my hair as I watch the sun drown
Brilliant colors perfectly reflected in the glassy lake.
And I peel off my bandages, layer after layer of bloody gauze
There should have been scars, twisted and deep and red with fresh memory
Instead I find only skin, smooth and whole, turned dark in the African sun.
I am ready again to share in the sorrow and intense joy, to love until it cuts deep again and burns like fire and I pull up another bucket hand over hand to drink...
Because my Jesus has come to the well, barefoot and bleeding and asking to share our water
It is here I've caught a glimpse of his heart.